Kalispell, Montana averages 151 sunny days per year. We were in the middle of one of our long winter stretches of inversions, which means days stretch into weeks, with nothing but cold temperatures and gray skies. Vitamin D becomes nothing but an old memory of summer long gone. Moods start to match the weather. Everyone…
How are we doing, everybody? Matt and I went to Lowe’s for a lawn mower spark plug on Sunday, him and me in face masks. Someone at church made them for us. I jokingly said, “Make sure his fabric works for a pastor.” She chose black skulls and flowers for him, if you need a…
You know what I was doing at 4:45 last evening? Setting the flameless candles. At 2:30 I rushed home from school, changed into work clothes, and started pulling Christmas boxes out of the crawl space. (By the way, I took two ibuprofen before going to bed, because it’s not smart to go from watching hours…
The twist cone is my favorite. I would never order plain vanilla, but it’s a nice compliment to chocolate. These days I’m thinking about how sorrow and joy squeeze out of the same spigot and come served to us always intertwined. Last week my son gave a sparkly to his girl, and now my husband…
So this is what it means to be rich, I think to myself, as the attendant takes my gift card and I pull into the Blue Cow Car Wash. The young guys give my dirty Montana car a good spray down, and then I put my car in neutral and let the magic happen. As…
It was a mistake I became aware of too late –taking the inside ordering lane at McDonald’s. The people on the outside track can pull straight forward to pay at the window, but the drivers on the inside have to work to merge. I ordered a crispy chicken snack wrap and a yogurt parfait and…
Beautiful day yesterday. Students hardworking, skies clear, temperature 74 degrees. And then one check-engine light, one large medical bill in the mail, and one lawn mower blowing smoke and dripping black. Cue: deflation. I stopped to recognize that inside me is a central hope that life will get more pleasant and not more difficult. Hope…
We had been in the ER since 3:00 a.m. The nurse had called, from my brother-in-law’s cell phone, to tell us he had been in a head-on collision (we found out later the other drive had been drunk.) We got dressed in a daze and raced to the hospital. Luke was relatively okay, except for…
Rarely do I get headaches, but I think I’d been stressed over the last few weeks, which led to shoulder scrunching and a grand finale of muscle knots. While the house was quiet on Saturday, I talked to God about this stress –trying to get to the root of it. Landing on the word fear,…
Going old school today, with a spiral notebook and my favorite Paper Mate pen. I’ve tucked myself away in my bedroom -ceiling fan creating white noise. The page is blank, and it is Monday. Nothing written. No words yet. No scratched out lines because the first attempt didn’t sound quite right. Soon my life will…
Last week, Spanish class was awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, not so hot. My students made me want to weep with their success on more than one occasion. They really made some great advancements. Then came Friday and what I thought was going to be a super easy matching vocab test, but they didn’t impress me…
Well, has your December calendar worn you out yet? If you’re coming into Christmas tired of soul, here’s a word of encouragement that I wrote a few years ago. It just needed some dusting off, and I think the message still fits. Merry Christmas to you, dear friend. Merry Christmas. I like a thick ream…
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